MACROMEDIA DIRECTOR

Director produced by Macromedia, is among the most powerful multimedia development tools for creating interactive cross-platform multimedia presentations, animations, CD-ROM's and Internet applications. It is based on a cinematic metaphor and many of the terms used within Director relate to this.

Director allows you to import 2D and 3D graphics, text, animation's, sounds, and digital video (or to create 2D graphics and text using Director's built-in graphics and text editors). These media elements - or objects - can then be integrated, synchronised, and animated over time using Director's powerful animation and integration tools. You can easily add interactivity using simple pull-down menus and options, while the completed production can be distributed to users via self-running executables - called Projectors - or over the Web using Shockwave.

In addition to its powerful media editing, animation, and integration functions, Director offers a flexible authoring metaphor which can be extended via Lingo (Director's built-in programming language), Xtras (plug-in modules which enhance Director's functionality), and even C, C++, and Java.

Basics
Director projects are known as a movies and all objects which can appear in the movie such as text, images, graphics, video and audio, are known as cast members. The basic elements in Director movie are Cast, Cast member, Sprite, Stage and Score. They are described in details in the Macromedia Director Tutorial.

Director uses a scripting language called Lingo. Lingo scripts can be attached to any cast member, sprite, and frame or be used as standalone handlers for more complex programming functions. Assigning scripts to objects is termed 'behaviour'. Inexperienced users and non-programmers can choose from over 30 pre-scripted behaviours, kept in the behaviour library, to add to objects.

Learn more about Macromedia Director 8.5.

Learning Curve
Mastering Director can be quite a challenge, especially if you use Lingo. Programming in Lingo really adds great interactivity in Director movies. You can use Lingo to control behaviour and properties of sprites, such as color and position. The problem is learning the nuances of Lingo programming.

Non-experienced users and non-programmers can avoid using Lingo, and add interactivity by choosing from over 30 pre-scripted behaviours to add to objects. If the author is a Java programmer, he can embed Java in a Lingo script to enhance and expand the Director player for Java's abilities. The "Save as Java" feature doesn't require special knowledge of Lingo or Java. For example, an animation can be converted with some behaviors into a Java applet that users can play in a web page.

See this useful Director Tutorial.
An entry point of sites created with Macromedia Director.

Supported Media Formats

Format Types Supported
Graphics BMP, DIB, WMF, EPS, PIC, PNT, GIF, TIF, PhotoCD, RTF, TXT, PICT, MacPaint, Scrapbook, RTF, PICS, QD3D
Animation FLC, FLI
Video MPEG, AVI, MOV, PAL, QTVR
Audio WAV, AIF, MIDI, SWA, AIFF, SoundEdit, SND


Delivery
To distribute Director movies on disk, you may save the movie as a projector. Projector is an application, that plays the movie, but doesn't allow its editing, because it doesn't contain the software, required for editing. Distributing movies on disk is also possible with protected movies, which load faster than projectors, because they are not compressed. But they need projector to play them, because they don't even include the software for playing the movie. Protected movies are good idea, when the disk space is unlimited.

Shockwave movies are used mostly for distribution on Internet, but they are also useful when a movie that is not in projector, needs to be compressed. Shockwave movies for Director movies can be played in Netscape Navigator - version 2.0 or later, and Microsoft Internet Explorer - version 3.0 or later. They also can be played in browsers, compatible with the plug-in architecture of Netscape Navigator 3.0. Shockwave movie contains movie's data compressed. When someone opens a web page with a shockwave movie in it, Shockwave starts decompressing the data, when it arrives, and then it plays the movie. All xtras, used to import the media for linked cast members in the movie, must be available when it runs. Shockwave players for Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer include xtras for some types of media like gif and jpeg graphics and some audio files. For the rest type of media the proper xtras must first be downloaded and installed.

One important feature from Director 6.5 is "Save As Java" Xtra. It allows a Director's movie to be converted into a Java applet. Applet is made up of Java and media files and is embedded in an HTML file that is automatically created. Aftershock can also generate an HTML document that decides to play the applet, a Shockwave movie, or an animated GIF depending on whether Java or the Shockwave plug-in is available.
Like many similar multimedia authoring packages hybrid CD-ROM's, known as Shocked CD-ROM's, can be produced allowing both CD-ROM and Internet based content to be seamlessly combined. URL's can be embedded within a movie which when clicked, will update the web browser with information from the Internet. This feature allows the developer to combine the content and connectivity of the World Wide Web (WWW) with the multimedia capabilities of a CD-ROM.

System Requirements
Windows
Authoring Playback Macintosh

Authoring Playback Intergration with other products
Director 7 also has new vector shapes and Flash 3 support to create extremely small, high quality shapes with built-in vector drawing tools. The new tools create shapes that can be animated and altered. Import Flash 3 files to use Flash animation, shape morphing, masking, and transparency.